To blog or not to blog…?

There is a short piece in today’s Sunday Life which quotes a Belfast City councillor accusing Slugger of “fanning the flames of sectarian hatred”. The thread that caught the councillor’s eye concerned the continuing attacks on Orange Halls across Northern Ireland.

Update: It seems I rather hastely ran to ‘print’ without checking whether or not the article was published. It was not. My apologies to all for the confusing arising

In that thread, an individual commenter left remarks which could have been construed as incitement to further attacks. They were brought to my attention by telephone, and removed before that conversation was ended.

We understand there is now a police investigation aimed at identifying precisely who made the remarks and to determine whether there was criminal intent behind them.

Before continuing, it is important to clarify something which the councillor’s remarks, if taken in isolation at least, might otherwise obscure. Broadly speaking, the blog is what is written above the line; comments are a ‘right of reply extended to the public as a courtesy.

It’s a crucial distinction, not least in law. We have guidelines for what is acceptable, and they bite a long way before we get near the legal line. But, partly as a result of this incident, we are working on toughening up the registration requirements for commenters in future.

My contribution to the blog is what I call the “Kit.” The commenters’ part is called the “Kaboodle.” Some of the everyday Kaboodlers make references to “our blog,” as though they’re co-proprietors. It’s obvious at this point that the Kaboodle is trying to take over the blog. And it won’t stop with me: I can picture the Kaboodle rambling across the countryside, panting heavily, stomping through people’s gardens, tinkling on little kids’ tricycles, etc. The general trend in blogs seems to be the diminution of the blogger and the elevation of the commentariat.

On Slugger this tendency is particularly pronounced when it comes to discussing anything to do with Protestant culture, and in particular the Orange Order. Take this threaded commentary which came in response to blog on Mairtin O’Muilleoir’s determination to find good things to say about the Orange Order.

This, however, is not reflected in the blog output. It is true that not everything Slugger puts out on the Orange Order is supportive. It has been a critical player in some of the difficulties of Northern Ireland’s past, and there have been occasions when the behaviour of some of its members have not come up to, what are in theory, its own very high standards of civil tolerance.

But on this issue of attacks on Orange Halls Slugger has been rigorous in documenting the extent and the seriousness of each attack as they have occurred.

Last March we began a thread documenting all apparently sectarian attacks on churches, and communities. The prompt was a nasty attack on St Columcille’s Catholic Church in East Belfast, but it quickly became obvious the extent to which the Protestant, rather than the Catholic community was bearing the brunt of these often very low level attacks. S

One way of dealing with this all of this is to just to ignore it and pretend it’s not happening. We certainly would avoid the risk of putting Slugger into legal jeopardy. Another is to close debate on such controversial matters. Several thoughts previously noted on Slugger come to mind. One from the Polish artist Krystof Wodiczko:

“I left Poland in search of democracy and found it was more like a phantom always shifting and constantly lingering on the horizon. Once it is given to someone, it changes. In fact, it needs to be remade every day. It requires the consistent disruption of silences and the [utterance] of things that people do not want to hear.”

Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty